Many lawyers and notaries public in Toronto will only place an imprint of their embossed seals on your documents without the use of coloured notary seal stickers to save on cost. They will often say that it is not required by law and that those coloured notary seals are only for decorative purposes. While it is true that a coloured notary seal is not required by law on a document for use in Ontario, in many places outside Ontario and especially in other countries where their laws do require that a notary public seal be imprinted onto a gold or red notary public seal sticker. Knowing this, many lawyers and notaries public will charge extra fees if you needed a gold or red notary seal on your document. The reasons that I decided on the gold notary public seal stickers include the following:

The gold notary public seal sticker is most used and recognized by courts, government agencies, law offices, and schools across the country and around the world.

The gold notary public seal sticker has many practical advantages over the red notary public seal sticker being that it is better seen through photocopying, scanning and faxing of the notarized document. A red notary public seal sticker often appears like a dark smear circle when photocopied, scanned, and faxed.

The gold notary public seal sticker also has many practical advantages over the no coloured sticker method or just the imprint of the embossed notary public seal. Without the use of a notary public seal sticker, the embossed imprint alone often will not show clearly through photocopying, scanning and faxing of the notarized document. The only way to get the embossed seal imprint to show clearly on photocopying, scanning and faxing is to run a coloured pencil over the seal imprint before running it through a photocopier, scanner or fax machine.